


Tha mo rùn air a’ghille

by imsfire



Series: The Jem Chronicles [4]
Category: The Town (2010)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Feels, Mild Smut, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-08
Updated: 2014-02-08
Packaged: 2018-01-11 14:44:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1174322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jem has a quick flirtation with a singer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tha mo rùn air a’ghille

These days, when we play a set, if it goes well and we get called back, the guys and I will usually do that lovely waltz called “Ashokan Farewell” by Jay Unger as an encore. If we get called back twice, I do the second encore solo and unaccompanied. It’s a little thing I have to do, like a game with myself. Or a promise.  
To introduce it, I say “I met a guy in Boston, once. I was going to sing this for him the next time we met, but he never made it. So this is for you, J., wherever you are…”  
And I sing “Tha mo rùn air a’ghille”; I love the lad.  
Most people listening don’t give a damn who J. was; I expect they think I’m saying Jay, anyway. They enjoy the ballad and the way I get a catch in my voice as I do the repeat at the end; the sheer naked feeling of that gets me smiling faces, every time. They don’t know there’s a story behind it. They don’t know I’m singing for a dead man.  
This is that story.  
Well, okay; bit of background, or this won’t make sense. I grew up on the Cap Breton coast; tough area, everyone’s a fisherman, half my school friends’ fathers didn’t make forty, blah blah. One of the biggest Gaelic-speaking areas in North America, certainly the biggest in Canada, we all have the old-country music in our blood, blah. My parents split up, my dad moved to the States, I grew up, played in a band, fell in love with Lachie, the music, relationships, successes, failures, blah.  
The band broke up. Lachlan and I broke up. Blah.  
I moved to the US and stayed with my dad in Boston, and got a dull office job, and told myself I was going to forget the music. There’d never been anything in it but dreams and heartache, and you have to grow up from those sometime. Then I made the mistake of confiding in a lass called Colette, from my office, and she got fired up with how I had to pursue my dreams, or die – she would always say it like that, real dramatic – “You have to pursue your dreams or die!” She kind of took me on, like a project.  
So, one Monday night we were at one of these places that call themselves “Irish Pub” and serve Guinness and Jameson’s and are full of drunk happy people pretending they’re on the old ancestral soil for a wee bit. It was an open mike night and there were some good amateurs in that area, and everybody seemed to know everybody, so there was plenty of what they still call craic, these blessed Boston Irish. Colette was trying to pick up a fiddle player with a Wyatt Earp mustache and I was having a beer and listening to the music.  
She leaned over suddenly and said to me “You should have a go, Maggie!” Loudly, so as her boyfriend would hear. She turned back to him. “Maggie used to do this for a living in Canada!”  
“It was never for a living, Colette, sweetie. Not my sole living, anyway.”  
“But you were paid, right? Maggie’s trying to give up the music, Declan. Isn’t that sad?”  
“You can’t give up the music, Maggie,” said Declan, through his mouth-hair. “You can’t just give it up, and you know it.”  
He didn’t know me from Adam – well, not from Eve, anyway – and he was still right. I scowled at him.  
There were two guys on the little stage, playing guitar and flute, tootling sweetly through a set of ports. They finished, and there was some applause. Colette said “You should step up to that mike, right now!” and beamed at me, and I said  
“No way – it would be too fucking embarrassing!”  
Just as the applause died down. My trained singer’s voice, and my Canadian accent, slapping out loud and clear into the hush. And me swearing like a trooper, too.  
Across the room I saw someone laugh; a little guy, no taller than I am myself, but as hard-muscled as a guy from home. He was drinking with some friends. He leaned over to them and said something, sotto voce, and they all looked my way and laughed, too. I could have yelled at him. He had no business making a mock of me, as though I were scared to sing in front of him and his crew.  
I glared at him, and he glared right back and then grinned. He had a wicked grin. Kind of a round face, and hair practically shaved off in that fake ex-forces look that normally doesn’t get to me at all. He was cocksure - vicious-looking, even; and yet he had the most beautiful clear blue eyes I think I’ve ever seen in a man. He was the embodiment of every stupid fantasy you’ve ever had of redeeming a Bad Boy with the Love of a Good Woman.  
I wanted to hit him for laughing at me; but he was on the other side of the room, with several buddies all of whom were bigger than me. Anyway, I had better things to offer than my fists.  
I stood up and walked onto the little stage area, and took hold of the microphone. It had been nine months since I’d held a mike, and it was good to curl my fingers round it for a moment and know I could still do this. Cocksure guy had stopped laughing and he was looking at me with his eyebrows raised; his face saying, clear as day, oh-yeah, ya think ya can impress me?  
I said “I’m Maggie Mathieson and I’m from the coast of Canada, and I’d like to sing for you.”  
I sang one of my favourites: I love the lad - Tha mo rùn air a’ghille. It’s a woman’s point-of-view song with a fabulous lilting tune, a lament about having lost your man and wishing the hell he was still with you. The line about the lad having beautiful long tresses of hair seemed a little odd, given that I was looking at Mr Cocksure and his buzz-cut as I sang; but the hell with that, it’s a great number and I gave it everything. There’s always a bit of a risk, singing Scots Gaelic to an Irish audience, that someone will come over all nationalistic and call you out for it; but most of this lot just seemed to be genuine music lovers, and I got a decent round of applause when I finished. Including from Mr Cocksure and his friends.  
More than that, I got that feeling that comes when you realise you’ve got an audience’s attention. It had been a long time since I’d had that, and it felt good. I told myself not to take it for granted; I gave them a real, deep, properly courteous bow and a smile that had forgotten everything except how to be happy, and I made to go back to my seat.  
Colette and Declan were barring my way; they were laughing, and she grabbed me and turned me around and pushed me back onto the little stage, hissing “Go on! You fucking owned that!”  
I was back on stage; they were still applauding; I was going to sing again. My heart went into my mouth for sheer joy. I stepped back to the mike, and the audience – my audience – clapped and stomped. For me. I was grinning from ear to ear and I didn’t even care that Mr Cocksure was looking at me like he planned on taking seizin of me later. He could possess me if he wanted, he could fucking eat me alive if he wanted; I’d had nine months of “I’m-on-the-rebound” shit before this guy’s mocking laugh had made me get up and sing again. He could have anything he wanted. I owed him; and besides, he was hot.  
I said “I used to do this number with the band I used to sing with; if I sound a bit uncertain it’s because they would have joined in after the first few repeats, so I’m not used to doing it completely solo. This is some more doomed-love stuff, but my Dad calls it the lament of the Hairy Himbo.”  
I started to sing “Hi rì him bÒ”, taking it slow, beating time with one foot since I had no-one to drum for me. It’s a long number and I was planning to cut it short – you can easily take out quite a lot of the gory hunting bit at the start. But I had only got as far as “Dìreadh bheann ‘s a’teàrnadh ghleannan” when a voice started to join in on the chorus, very softly, from the other side of the room, and next second someone with a guitar began to pick out chords. I nearly lost my place altogether, it made me jump so much, so although I had another ten stanzas to go before I even got to the God-you-are-so-fucking-beautiful part, I just kept going and forgot about trying to cut a line here and there. The chorus is a simple puirt–á-beul, just nonsense words, and whoever my accompanist was he’d picked them up word-perfect, straight off. And God, it felt good to have an accompaniment, and another voice backing me. I’d forgotten how good.  
When I realised who it was, I forgave him, since he was making me feel so warm and powerful, like a proper singer again. Cocky bastard had gotten hold of a guitar from somewhere, and he was grinning that evil grin at me as he sang and played. He could play, too; and his voice wasn’t at all bad. I’ve heard professionals with worse. My alto and his husky baritone blended really well.  
I did step down, after that, and some other singer did a number or two; and then Declan got up and played, while Colette looked at his mouth-hair and went all smooch-eyed. And then, to my surprise, Mr Cocksure stepped up. His friends yelled as if it was the second coming. He still had the guitar, and he pulled over a chair and brought the mike down to string level, and then bent into it to say “Shut the fuck up, guys, you ah fuckin’ embarrassing me!” before shooting me another of those mocking smiles. Then he began to play.  
He didn’t sing, and I remember thinking that was a pity, since he’d already shown off the fact he was good; but he was only a bar or two into his music when I recognised the tune. It was what I know as The Little Cascade. It’s a Scots tune – actually I know it best as a harp piece, but it sounded great on the guitar – and it made me feel warm and breathless, and then more than warm, and more than breathless. I was sure he was playing it for me.  
At least now I got a chance to get a good look at him. Truth to tell, he really wasn’t my type. Except when he let his eyes speak, he looked like seven kinds of rough with a side helping of mean. Although Lachie would have stood over him by a good six inches, I had no doubt at all which of them would win if it came to a fight; my pretty Lachlan Dundonald would have stood as much chance as a leaf of lettuce. I suppose, if I’m honest, that was part of what attracted me; the idea of Lachie, who’d dumped me for that baby-doll Janie Osborn, getting the crap beaten out of him by this piece of working class American trash. That, and those fabulous eyes; eyes full of feeling, in a hard face that showed no feelings at all.  
Okay, and he also had very nice hands. I’m a bit of a hand fetishist; I like a big, manly hand and a well-shaped wrist. This guy had both; large palms, bony wrists and bony, veiny backs to his hands, very long fingers with proper knots at each knuckle – and his fingering on the steel strings of the guitar was delicate and precise. He played like it really meant something to him. He looked like the kind of guy who has an official girlfriend and another on the side, and probably enjoys the company of whores and strippers as well. He could have been the very hardest of the fishermen from home, and he was everything my poor father had been trying to keep me away from ever since I was twelve and asked him why so many men have muscles. But, God, he played so well.  
I found myself wondering all sorts of wonderings, about setting up a new band, finding bars and clubs that staged live music, getting started again. I’d seemingly walked smack into a good guitarist and second singer. With him, and me, and Declan maybe; if I could get hold of a frame drum of some sort, we’d be set. All sorts of silly wonderings were filling my head, and me with the buzz of just two songs in me.  
I suddenly noticed that Colette had gone; just like that. There was no sign of her and no sign of Declan. Which was fine, for her, and I imagined for him too, but it left me without a lift; and my Dad was expecting me home by midnight and was bound to worry himself sick if I didn’t show up on time. I had to play fair by him. He wasn’t a young man, and he had some old-fashioned values, but he had looked after me for the last nine months with never a word of question or blame. I looked at my watch and worked out that if I left in the next ten or fifteen minutes I could get a late bus and be home in good time.  
I stayed to applaud the guy, finished the last mouthfuls of my beer, and then went to the bathroom, and got my coat, and made my way out.  
I was standing in the street, trying to think which way to go for the bus home, and a voice behind me said “Runnin’ out on me, Gaelic?”  
Definitely seven kinds of rough, with an eighth kind right there in that deep, gravelly voice. There was a note of mockery, and a note of threat, and more than a touch of lust in those words. I couldn’t have said for a million dollars whether I’d rather listen to him speak, or sing; both, in their different ways, were unbelievably hot.  
I turned round and tried to think of something smart-alecky to say, and couldn’t. Hadn’t I been fantasising about those big hard hands all over me for the last hour? But I did have to be off home; if I was late my poor father would give himself a heart-attack. I owed my father a hell of a lot more than I owed Mr Cocksure.  
I decided the only thing was to go for honesty, and hope for the best. I wasn’t going to call him Mr Cocksure, though – I do have some commonsense. I said “Thank you for playing for me, Guitar-man; you were fantastic. I’ll be back next week. But I have to go now, or I’ll miss the last bus.”  
“Can’t someone give ya a lift?” The way he said “lift” had more than one layer of meaning, for sure. He had lit up a cigarette and was dragging on it; those strong fingertips pressed against his lips and lingered for a second.  
“My lift scored herself a fiddler and went off without me.”  
“So score yahself some musician too, don’t play the fuckin’ Cinderella…”  
I shook my head. “I can’t. I really do have to go.”  
His face went cold; I realised he wasn’t used to women blowing him out. “Have ya been playin’ with me, bitch? All fuckin’ evenin’? Ya think yah something special? Fuckin’ Canadians - hell, yah not even the right kinda Celt. I sang for ya, ya can fuckin’ sing for me!”  
He started to move towards me, swaggering a little even in anger. I stood my ground and threw up both hands, palms out in a clear stop signal, and I said “Don’t try anything. I grew up in a tough area too, you know. Listen to me, damn you!”  
I guess he’d expected me to back away, to be frightened, because he came up to within a foot of me and then stopped dead. He was exactly of a height with me and his eyes were locked on mine. I read rage and pique mixed in them, and desire, and a kind of angry amusement. Yes, he certainly wasn’t used to anyone saying no; I half wondered why I was, since a good deal of me was thinking the opposite and had been since he first looked me over.  
“Listen to me. Fucking right I’ll sing for you again. Next week. Or whenever the next open mike night is. Say, listen, you’re good with that guitar. Did you ever think of playing in a band? I’m going to be looking for musicians soon; you remember that. As for tonight, look, my life hasn’t been in too good a place lately and I’m having to live with my Dad at the moment, which – isn’t ideal, in lots of ways – but he’s been there for me when no-one else was and I respect him. He’s my father, god dammit! He’s not a young guy and he’s old-fashioned. So, I don’t take men home. And I’m not doing you on the ground behind the dumpsters because it’s been raining and I like my comforts. And believe me, give me a chance and I can make you like my comforts, too.”  
I’m not sure whether it was the I-respect-my-father line or the offer of playing in this putative band, or just that he was wondering what comforts I might have in mind, but he suddenly laughed. Not mocking at all, this time, but a big, warm, rough laugh with a jolt to it. He sounded like a good outboard turning over. He threw down the half-smoked cigarette and stepped on it, and then came up close and caught me round the waist, and pulled me against his body, and said “Ya gonna make me?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Well, I look forward to that!” And with that he leaned in and kissed me, hard, pushing my lips open and shoving his tongue into my mouth. He tasted of smoke and whisky and hot, ready flesh; he tasted like all the life I’d been missing. His hands were strong as steel clamps and his body was like a rock against mine, a rock of the perfect shape and height and strength. He fitted. I didn’t even know his name.  
Lachie had never fitted. Lachie was so tall I had had to bend over backwards to kiss him, and I’d gotten a crick in my neck every time; yet he’d never really been strong with me, and I’d always worried he might drop me. I felt this man’s hands on me, his powerful arms round me, and a very powerful erection against my crotch, and he just felt so right I wanted to forget everything I’d been saying and drag him behind the trash cans right away.  
But I didn’t. I gripped him close and held that fine ass against me with my spread hands, and he laughed, still kissing me. We worked our tongues on one another till we were both breathless; and then I pulled away, and he stood there laughing at me with that I-gotta-big-engine-here laugh of his, and let me go.  
“Next week, Gaelic?”  
“Hell, yeah.”  
“And ya’ll sing ‘Tha mo rùn’ for me? Ya promise?”  
“Baby, I’ll do more than sing it…”  
“I look forward to it. Maggie Mathieson from the coast of Canada!”  
He snorted. You’d think there was something funny about being called Maggie. Or Mathieson. Or both.  
“Hey, it’s not fair – you know my name and I don’t know yours. What do I call you?”  
“Ya call me Jem, Maggie Mathieson. ‘Cos I am a gem.”  
His face was doing dreadful things to my resolve as he chuckled at me. God, he was gorgeous, with that big dirty grin, and those eyes that said so much more than his words could. I’d felt those big hands now, and I wanted more. But I was prepared to wait; hell, it had been a long time, another week wouldn’t hurt me. He sure as hell wouldn’t be going without for a week, I was certain of that; and me, I would manage. I enjoy anticipation. Like Christmas Eve. If it was open mike night every Monday, it gave me a reason to look forward to Mondays.  
I said “Goodnight, then, Jem. I’ll see you next week.”  
He was still laughing as I went up the street to look for a bus stop.  
The next day, at work, Colette apologised to me, though I could tell what she really wanted was to be asked for details of how it had gone down with Declan. I obliged, since it was obvious she was shiny-happy about things. I got a lot more detail than I’d bargained for, so I didn’t feel contrite at all in telling her “You didn’t really let me down, anyway. After you’d gone, I got talking to that guy with the guitar, and I’m seeing him next week.”  
“You’re seeing him? What, you mean like a date?”  
“Ah, no, I don’t think quite like a date, no. More like, I have a week to find us somewhere we can fuck undisturbed.”  
“Maggie, you’re such an innocent sometimes you scare me. Be careful. He looked like trouble. All Townies are…”  
“Oh, babe, don’t worry about me. I can look after myself. So he’s a Townie and he’s unlikely to work in an office; well, hey, so what? So what if my Dad won’t approve until he hears him play; so what if he’s working class and has an accent – hell, I’ve got an accent; so what if he’s the wrong kind of Celt – so my Dad really won’t approve! – but Colette, I’m not expecting this to be wedding bells, you know? It’s been a long time and I could really use some male attention, and he’s so fucking hot it’s not true.”  
“Be careful,” Colette said again.  
I was careful. I found a hotel I could afford. I bought condoms, which I hadn’t had to do in a while. I made sure my dad didn’t find them. Then I primed him that I’d met a guy I liked, and I was feeling ready to start dating, and the guy was an amateur musician – that sounds quite smart if you pitch it right – and Dad was so busy being pleased for me he didn’t even ask what this man did for a living. Which was a good thing, since I hadn’t a clue.  
And come Monday, I went over to the Irish Pub, by myself.  
The place was half empty, and no-one was playing music. They hadn’t even set up the microphones. I felt such a fool, and for a moment I wondered if Jem had set me up, to get back at me for not fucking him behind a dumpster on his say-so. But rough stuff or no, he really hadn’t struck me as a guy with insecurity issues about women; if he hadn’t cared to see any more of me, he would simply have said “It’s yah loss, Gaelic” and left it at that.  
The middle-aged woman behind the bar looked pretty down; and I suddenly felt this was all kinds of wrong, all the worst kinds. I had to know what was going on.  
I went over.  
“Hi, there, how are you? Hey, I was here last week, last Monday, the place was hopping. That was some good craic. Is there nothing going on tonight? I thought it was every Monday.”  
She looked at me like I was an idiot. “Not this week. Didn’tcha hear the news?”  
“Which news?”  
“Fenway Park…”  
My first thought was, they take their sports that seriously? The stadium gets robbed, and she’s depressed? Colette was right, I am an innocent sometimes. I actually may have smiled.  
She said “The guys who pulled that job, they were locals. They were regulars here, in most nights. Three of them are dead and the fourth has disappeared, nobody’s seen him since. The whole neighbourhood’s just real shaken… It would be disrespectful to have a party, they’re not even in the ground yet.”  
“Jesus. I’m so sorry. That must have been such a shock.”  
She looked at me even more sharply. “We weren’t shocked they did it, ya dumb chick. Not those four. Just shocked at what went down. This is Charlestown. They weren’t stupid, they shoulda been able to pull something like that off without getting killed. Young guys with their lives ahead of them. What a waste.”  
“Yeah…”  
And then she said “Hell, I remember ya. Ya were here last week. Ya sang. Jesus, ya were good.”  
“Oh, why, thank you… Hey, maybe you can help me. I got talking to a guy on my way out, I was expecting to see him tonight but I guess he’s not here. If you see him, could you tell him I said hi? Maggie Mathieson from the coast of Canada. Just say that; he’ll remember me.”  
She smiled. “Sure. What’s his name?”  
“Jem.”  
There was a long pause, and I watched her face change. She started to say something, and stopped, and started again; and I knew. I was looking into her kind, tired eyes, and I just knew.  
“He was one of them, wasn’t he? The stadium guys?”  
“Yeah.”  
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to think. I said “I see… Okay… I – I guess I’d better go, then.”  
Two songs and one tune on the guitar; one conversation, one hot, hot kiss; and a week of anticipation, but Christmas would never come.

I’ve never let any musician I’ve worked with since play The Little Cascade on the guitar. Even as a harp tune, it’s still the saddest music I ever heard. Because even criminals are still young guys with their lives ahead of them. And all I can do is sing the song I promised him, and remember a man I barely knew; a man who was cocksure as hell, and who didn’t make it.


End file.
